The Canal House

by Mark Lee

  Daniel came out of the Turismo looking annoyed. I liked Jenkins and decided to keep him out of trouble. “This is my partner, Daniel McFarland. Be careful, Captain. He’s a journalist. If you say something foolish, he’s going to write it down.”

  Jenkins stood a little straighter and spoke like a schoolboy giving a recitation. “The Royal Gurkha Rifles are proud to be serving in East Timor. We’ll do everything we can to restore order.”

  “No, you won’t,” Daniel said. “You’re going to waste your time guarding this hotel.”

  DANIEL PLACED HIS LAPTOP on the wall in the parking lot. Standing beside an armored personnel carrier, he wrote a quick article and sent it off to London with his sat phone. When he was done, I sent off digital photographs of General Bates and the kidnapped women and children screaming in the back of the truck. We were safe at the hotel, surrounded by soldiers, but I could tell that Daniel wasn’t satisfied. He ate a candy bar and drank some water, then packed up his equipment.

  “Let’s go, Nicky.”

  “Go where?”

  “I’ve already got the general’s quote. Now I’ve got to find something real.”

  We left the Turismo and headed west on a side street. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon, but it seemed much later. Smoke was smeared across the sky and the sun looked like a hazy disc of fire. With all the haze it was difficult to gauge distance and aperture. The ash particles in the air diffracted the light and the leaves on the shade trees turned a darker shade of green.

  Gunshots echoed in the distance, then we heard the whoosh-bang sound of a rocket-propelled grenade. A few blocks away, an off-key car horn kept bleating loudly. We discovered a street littered with smashed computer monitors and another street covered with spilled rice. Someone had ripped up a plastic shower curtain and little shreds of neon pink were scattered over a five-block area. A pickup truck raced toward us near the ruins of the teacher’s college and Daniel pulled me into a doorway. Two Indonesian soldiers were in the truck cab and two more sat in the back guarding a goat and an exercise bike. I had the feeling that all the valuable property had been stolen weeks ago and now the Indonesians were blindly grabbing whatever remained.

  Around four o’clock we returned to the harbor and accompanied an old woman on her way to the Igreja Motael church. Daniel thought that a priest or a doctor might be there—someone who could give him a quote and tell him how many people had been killed. A low white wall surrounded the church grounds and hundreds of people lay on the dirt beneath banyan trees. No one moved or spoke to us when we passed through the little gate. The people looked too exhausted to show any emotion.

  More refugees were inside the church, sleeping on the floors or leaning against the walls. Some feeble light oozed through the stained-glass windows and a single candle burned near the altar. The building smelled of urine and smoke. Only two girls were crying and that was a bad sign. It meant that the other children were weak and dehydrated.

  I stepped carefully around people as I walked up to a side altar. Someone had shot off the head of the Virgin Mary. The plaster chunk that contained her eyes watched me as I crouched down and tried to take a picture of the ruined statue. I didn’t want to use the flash on my camera. It felt wrong. I took a few pictures with the digital, then opened up the f-stop on the Nikon and hoped for the best.

  When I turned back around I saw Daniel kneeling beside a small, elderly woman lying on the floor. I thought he was trying to interview her, but he motioned for me to help. “Give her some water, Nicky.”

  “We only have two full bottles.”

  “Give her my bottle. You can keep yours.”

  I handed him the larger bottle and he helped the old woman drink. Some of the water dribbled down the side of her mouth.

  “Got any food, Nicky?”

  “Just some candy bars.”

  “Give me one.”

  I passed Daniel a chocolate bar. He broke it up and gave a piece to the old woman. “A lot of these people are going to die.”

  “We’re not medical workers and we don’t have any supplies. Come on, Daniel. It’s getting late. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Daniel had distributed the rest of his water and three more candy bars before I finally got him to leave. The sun was going down as we hiked back to the waterfront area. The smoke from the destruction had created a beautiful sunset of pink and scarlet. I switched to a wide angle lens and got a shot of the UN fleet outlined against the luminous sky. We met two Dutch journalists who were going to spend the night out at the airport, guarded by the Interfet troops, but Daniel didn’t want to leave the city. A two-story hotel was just across the street from the Governor’s Office. When we entered the hotel restaurant, a skinny Timorese man peered out from the kitchen.

  “Jornalista?” he asked in Portuguese.

  “Sim. Jornalista,” said Daniel. “Queriamos quarto.”

  The skinny man nodded and used most of his English vocabulary. “Australia dollar, good. America dollar, good. No rupiah.”

  Our hotel had no electricity, no phones, no water, and no bed linen, but we paid 150 Australian dollars for two mattresses in an empty room. The moment we closed the door, I felt a little calmer. We weren’t exactly safe, but it was better than being on the street.

  I downloaded my photos and sent them directly to London. While Daniel typed up articles and sent them off, I paid ten dollars to fill up our bottles from a bathtub of water in the hotel manager’s room. I dropped purification tablets into the bottles, then drank as I ate a candy bar. The taste of iodine and chocolate always reminded me of war.

  As it began to get dark, more journalists straggled into the hotel. The manager sold us candles and bowls of rice mixed with bits of dried fish. I was trying to decide if a rubbery strip of tissue was actually food when the Portuguese cameraman knocked on our door. “Há incêndio,” he whispered. There’s a fire. We followed him up a ladder to the roof. Other journalists were already there, looking out at the city. Houses were burning in the west section of Dili. Flames glowed bright orange in the darkness and there was the faint popping sound of someone firing an automatic rifle.

  “Lot of jumped-up crazies,” said a journalist from New Zealand. “Can’t have the bloody country so they’re going to burn it down.”

  Daniel stood on the edge of the roof and watched the destruction. It bothered me that he had given away his food and water at the church. In Africa, he’d been selfish and single-minded, but I trusted his instincts. Nowadays he seemed a lot more vulnerable. I wondered if I should have left him at the convent garden back in Rome.

  “Look at that fire! The world’s burning down!” a Portuguese journalist said. Something exploded inside one of the houses and sparks rose up to the sky. I moved my shoulder when I took out my camera and the cut on my back felt like it was burning, glowing in darkness.

  AT DAWN, DANIEL LEFT our hotel room and returned with a pot of tea and two bowls of plain white rice. He prodded me in the ribs and I decided that everything was going to be all right.

  “Wake up, Nicky. Time to get going.”

  “I’m not asleep. I’m resting my eyes.”

  “How was your mattress?”

  “Better than the Ruskin.”

  He gave me some chopsticks and poured a cup of tea. It was hot and strong and the steam had a flowery scent. “I just hired a driver who says he can find a car.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “When everything is falling apart, look for the man wearing a clean shirt. A clean shirt means he’s either disciplined or resourceful.”

  “Or maybe he just stole it from a laundry.”

  “That’s the resourceful part.”

  Daniel replaced my bandage and we left the hotel. The fires had died out in the center of Dili, but a charred smell still lingered in the air. We saw several other journalists on the street, then Tristram Müller ambled out of the hotel holding a coconut.

  “Nicky! Daniel! Did you stay here last
night?”

  “Up on the first floor.”

  “I’ve got a room on the ground floor, near the back. I paid some extra money and got a chair.” Tristram held up the coconut. “You’re Americans. You rope cows and slaughter Indians. So how do you crack this open without a hammer?”

  “Go to one of these churches and drop it off the bell tower.”

  “That’s way too much effort.” Tristram looked exasperated. “What this town needs is some Chinese merchants. If the Chinese had stayed around I bet we could buy a bottle of cold beer and a decent meal.”

  Daniel glanced up and down the street, looking for the man with the clean shirt and a car. “What’s the latest rumor?”

  “Some militiamen chopped off the head of a priest and impaled it on a stick in the middle of the village.” Tristram gave us a sly smile. “Of course, no one knows the location of the village or the name of the priest or even if it really happened.”

  Tristram waddled off to crack his coconut and we remained outside the hotel. While we waited for the car, I watched how the rumor of the headless priest gained substance and then an air of reality. Journalists told each other the story, then scurried around like ants that had just heard about a crumb of blueberry pie. People insisted that a Japanese TV crew had actually photographed this incident, but then we were told, no, a Swedish cameraman filmed it. The Swedes announced that no one had actually seen the head, but they were going to the village in southwest Dili later that day.

  There was great excitement when a fourteen-year-old boy named José appeared and offered to sell directions to the dead priest for ten Australian dollars. Daniel watched this transaction for a few minutes, then took the boy’s hand and made him touch the crucifix hanging from his neck. “Não há a cabeça,” Daniel whispered in Portuguese.

  José panicked for a moment, then relaxed like a witness who was finally allowed to tell the truth. “É verdade, senhor. No head.”

  Daniel gave the boy three cigarettes as a tip and walked over to where I was sitting.

  “Waste of time?” I asked.

  “You noticed Tristram didn’t go for it. Usually the rumors are about a crucified priest. This was a new variation.”

  Most of the other journalists were gone when a Honda Accord with blown-out windows turned the corner. It stopped a few feet away from us and the driver got out. Silverio Fernandes was a thin, jittery young man with oily hair. He didn’t look very reliable, but he did have a clean shirt.

  “Good morning, gentlemens. Please to be in my automobile.”

  We pried open the door and got into the backseat of the sedan. Someone with an automatic weapon had fired into the vehicle. It looked like a madman had attacked the upholstery with a hatchet and the back door on the left side was tied to the doorframe with rope and twisted wire. Dried blood covered the driver’s seat and the rubber mat under the gas pedal. The blood was dark red, like rust, and little specks of it clung to the back of Silverio’s jeans.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Daniel.

  “A suburb called Becora. It’s a pro-independence neighborhood where there’s been a lot of fighting.”

  Silverio got back into the car and gave us a big smile. “Gentlemens, I am ready to serve you.”

  “Leve-me Becora,” Daniel said in Portuguese and pulled out a wad of Australian dollars.

  Silverio shook his head rapidly. “No. No. This is muito difίcil.”

  The money disappeared back into Daniel’s pocket and he forced open the door. “Get out of the car, Nicky. We’re done with Mr. Fernandes.”

  “Com certeza, I can take you there. I only say it is difίcil.”

  “It’s always difficult,” I said. The car jerked forward, then shivered and backfired up the street. Although the Honda was wrecked, Silverio acted like he had just bought it from a car dealer. Whenever we encountered a burned-out vehicle or a pile of rubble, he hit the turn signal and made a wide curve around the obstacle.

  I had both my cameras out, looking for a shot, and I focused on the few things that had survived the general destruction. A small red flower. A jacaranda tree. Two straight-back chairs and a white refrigerator.

  We drove up into the hills that surrounded the city and found the smoking ruins of hundreds of houses. A few old women were dragging away sheets of collapsed roofing, then searching through the ashes. They watched us warily, like the deer you might encounter on a country road. Silverio announced that we were in Becora and Daniel told him to stop. We got out, walked through someone’s backyard and approached a bare-chested man.

  “Olá, senhor.”

  The man had come down from the hills to look for his lost daughter, Gabriela. “Are you Australians?” he asked in Portuguese. “Are you from the United Nations?” Trying to act invisible, I focused on his thin, exhausted face. “I think they killed her,” he told us. “But I pray.”

  Silverio looked nervous. He combed his sideburns, then glanced up and down the streets. “Gentlemens,” he pleaded. “Se faz favor. We go back now.”

  “Mas lento,” Daniel said. “I need at least one more interview.”

  We got back into the car. When we drove past a house that was still burning, I asked Silverio to stop for a minute. A framed photograph of some saint with rays coming out of her head was still hanging on a scorched wall. Nice colors, I thought. Half a page in the magazine. I jumped out and crouched down in the ashes for a shot.

  A dump truck came up the hill, its gears grinding. Men wearing red-and-white headbands stood on the truck bed and gripped the frame. When they saw us they shouted and began firing their assault rifles. It didn’t sound dangerous, more like the crackling sound of a string of firecrackers, until a bullet ricocheted off the Honda’s back bumper. Silverio leaped out of the car and sprinted across the road as Daniel ran toward me.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”

  We scrambled over a wall, ran between two houses, and cut through a garden filled with bright red peppers and tomato plants. Why would anyone kill us when people were growing zucchini and honeybees were buzzing around some morning glories? The fast-breathing, dry-mouthed terror that had taken over my body found no confirmation in the pleasant scenery. We heard more gunfire in the distance as we cut across a dirt road and began to climb a ravine.

  We reached a grove of thatch palms at the top of the ravine and I collapsed on the dead leaves that covered the ground. I was sweating and breathing hard, but I felt exhilarated. Still alive.

  Daniel lit a cigarette, then buried the match in the dirt. “Lost my phone. Left it in the car.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lost the water bottles.”

  I nodded.

  “Lost the chocolate bars.”

  I lay on my back and gazed up at the sky. “Now that’s a real crisis.”

  Julia

  17 DILI

  I stood on the bow of the Seria as we followed the UN convoy into Dili Harbor. The city was burning. Columns of smoke from different fires rose up into the sky and combined into a hazy gray cloud that drifted across the water. Small particles of ash—very light, very fragile—fell on the deck of the ship. I could hear gunshots and a single alarm bell that rang loudly at first, then weakened and died.

  Everyone came out on deck and stared at the burning city. Richard had some binoculars and we took turns using them. Columns of gray smoke came from looted buildings while the black smoke came from burning cars. Billy nodded solemnly like a theater critic watching an impressive performance. “The Indonesians would burn down the whole bloody island if they could,” he said. “They don’t want to leave anything behind.”

  The Seria was filled with tons of food, water, and medicine, but Interfet command had ordered Captain Vanderhouten not to move the ship without permission. As the day went on and the smoke kept rising, Billy played cards with Collins and Briggs. The crew slept on deck or fished for shark with chunks of rotten meat. Richard sat in his cabin with his sat phone and told executives ho
w to take control of a Scottish bank. We had traveled thousands of miles to come here and now we weren’t helping anyone. I kept pacing from the bow to the stern and back again.

  Different patches of fire flared up that night. They grew larger and merged together. I watched the wind push the fire north, extending its bright orange fingers through the darkness. When I woke up the next morning and went out on deck, I could smell a harsh chemical odor that reminded me of melted plastic. The flames were gone, but smoke drifted from the ruins. Using the binoculars, I watched Indonesian soldiers carry looted furniture and television sets down to the wharf where two ferries were waiting. On the radio they were saying that UN troops had landed at Dili airport and were beginning to take control of the city. If the soldiers had arrived, that meant Daniel was probably with them.

  I locked the door of my cabin and lay on the narrow berth. In my mind, I saw Daniel at Bracciano digging out the roots of a dead olive tree. Sweat glistened on his skin, and his shoulders shifted and moved as he raised an ax and swung at the earth. I remembered him walking down Church Street on a rainy afternoon. Then he was standing in the bedroom of the Canal House on the first night of snow. He opened the window, took a knife from the dresser, and held it out into the cold darkness. Silently, he turned and walked over to our bed, a single perfect snowflake resting on the blade.

  Now we were just a few miles apart, but there was no way to see him or know that he was safe. When I left Bracciano, I had wished for the sort of fantasy that appears in the Sunday supplements: together, but apart, the modern couple who manages to have a relationship even though she’s lecturing at Harvard and he’s directing operas in Bayreuth. It was all nonsense, of course. If you loved someone, you tried to stay with them, and yet somehow we had thought that it was the right choice to go off in different directions.

  The burning city was dangerous, even for an experienced journalist. The radio reported that groups of anti-independence militiamen were starting the fires and killing people. And there were other dangers, too: the chance that Daniel would be lured back to the solitary life. It was easier being alone and unencumbered, like having fewer bags to carry to the train.